It is recognized in the art that many of the available coals are "caking coals", that is, they possess the undesirable characteristic of fusing into a solid mass when heated through their plastic temperature range which occurs at about 400.degree. C. This fusing or caking requires a pretreatment step to reduce or eliminate the caking property before the coal can be treated in gasification, hydrogenation, carbonization, and similar processes which require heating the coal through its plastic temperature range. The prior art recognizes a number of methods for pretreating coal to effect decaking.
The increased use of coal rather than petroleum as a source material makes it desirable that the processing of coal be made as efficient as possible in terms of time, cost and energy requirements. The method of this invention provides such an efficient means for decaking normally caking coals.